Was reminded to share this after reading Delhommey's thread in The Tinderbox about people switching from big banks in favor of credit unions...

So, just before we left for a weekend trip I received an alert regarding a change to an account from my credit monitoring service.

Turns out Wells Fargo made a false report to the credit agencies saying we missed a payment on a car loan that our dealership just paid off when we traded our old car in for a new one. They said we missed the last payment prior to it being paid off last month and reported it as "no more than two months past due." The account is now closed, as it was completely paid off by the dealership. The loan on the old car was through Wells Fargo, who we also bank with (not by our choice, but because they bought out Wachovia and we got stuck with them).

My wife has a ledger showing what bills she has paid each month, and KNEW she paid that prior to us trading it in. We called Wells Fargo and checked for ourselves online as well to look up the payment history... Turns out, they erased all of the payment history from our account except for one month in September. Nothing prior, nothing after.

Last time I checked, just because you pay something off doesn't mean your bank erases all payment history made on it. I guess this is the negative of having a loan on something with the same bank that you actually bank with.

It pisses me off because we are responsible and always pay our bills on time. So, to have them make this change and then erase the payment history so we can't disprove it sucks.

Each of the 3 Credit reporting power to be have a place where you can challenge something on your credit report. State your case and I'll be you will have it over turned. I had a similar problem it was taken off my credit report.

I challenged things even if they were right. Some came off my report and my credit score rose.

They didn't erase your payment history. That's illegal. Whoever you talked to might not have known where it was, but all financial transactions have to be kept on record. Even though we (PayPal) are not a bank in the US, we still have to keep all accounts that were ever created, and all transactions that ever happened on our systems in a database (which is why we have the largest installation of Oracle in the world). They have the records somewhere, and you should have them on your bank statements.

Note: that means that even if you 'delete' your account, it's not actually deleted. We, and they, cannot legally delete these accounts nor their records. They just change the permissions so that you cannot access them any more. The data is still there.

They didn't erase your payment history. That's illegal. Whoever you talked to might not have known where it was, but all financial transactions have to be kept on record. Even though we (PayPal) are not a bank in the US, we still have to keep all accounts that were ever created, and all transactions that ever happened on our systems in a database (which is why we have the largest installation of Oracle in the world). They have the records somewhere, and you should have them on your bank statements.

Note: that means that even if you 'delete' your account, it's not actually deleted. We, and they, cannot legally delete these accounts nor their records. They just change the permissions so that you cannot access them any more. The data is still there.

I know that is illegal, but their own customer service rep searched our account activity and couldn't find it anywhere. The only month she found was September. I don't know why that was the only month that showed up, but it is, according to them.

And I don't say they suck balls just because of this, but this was just the tipping point to find a new bank...